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The Catholic Church

John Shepard

Nov 12, 2002

Inerrancy of Bible

Purpose

To discuss the doctrine of Inerrancy in the context of the debate between Protestants and Catholics.

Process for Deriving the Doctrine | The Foundation of Inerrancy | Objections | Another View of Inerrancy

Related article: Sola Scriptura

Overview

Both Catholics and evangelical, fundamental Protestants accept the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. By this is meant that the Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit and that it is true in all it asserts. But how do we know that these claims are true?

In this article I will demonstrate that Protestants have no basis for claiming that the Bible is inerrant. Instead they must be content to merely claim that the Bible is:

1. Trustworthy -- That the Bible is a trustworthy source of knowledge in the subjects it deals with, and
   
   
2. Effective -- That the writers of the Bible were (1) selected by God for that ministry, and (2) trained by God according to His plan so that their words are, as a result, effective. Some of this training involved supernatural events.

As I will show, Protestants are unable to provide a framework in which they can effectively develop the doctrine of inerrancy. This is a consequence of their rejection of the authority of church tradition. As a result they must read the Bible in the same way as they would read any other historical book and on this basis they must content themselves with merely accepting that the claims of the Bible are sound. Although they will insist otherwise, the New Testament itself can never be used to claim its own inerrancy, nor does it do so.

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Inerrancy of Bible

Process for Deriving the Doctrine

How is the doctrine of inerrancy derived? The first few steps of the process for determining whether or not the Bible is inerrant are the same for both Protestantism and Catholicism. These common steps are:

1. We start by considering the Bible as we would any other ancient text. We validate that the copies are accurate and that what we have in our possession is basically what the writers wrote.
   
   
2. We then read what it says and determine whether it appears to be a factual account of what happened historically. We compare the text with other historical records and with archaeological evidence. If this evidence demonstrates the basic trustworthiness of the Bible (which it does), then we continue on to the next step.
   
   
3. We believe the Biblical accounts as being true and commit ourselves to living our lives based on the truths we discover.

At this point the process diverges for Catholicism and Protestantism. Let's look at the Catholic version first:

1. We learn from the pages of the New Testament (which we don't yet consider as inerrant) that Jesus intended to establish an infallible Church (The Catholic Church) which was to be the authority on matters of faith and doctrine. A key passage is: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" (Mat 16:18).
   
   
2. The Church then determined and decreed that the Bible is inerrant. So this is what we must accept on faith.

Now let's consider the Protestant version:

1. Once we know that the Bible is trustworthy, we can look within its pages to learn whether or not it is infallible. Passages such as "all Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Tim 3:16) are cited as evidence.

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The Foundation of Inerrancy

In the Protestant view of inerrancy it is necessary to first place our faith in a particular interpretation of certain Biblical passages before we can know that the Bible is inerrant. We have to ask:

1. Do the passages used to support the doctrine of inerrancy really claim that the New Testament is inerrant? And can a document's claim to inerrancy be used as evidence of its own inerrancy? (If this were true then the Book of Mormon would also be inerrant since it claims to be.)
   
   
2. Why do we even need to know that the Bible is inerrant at all? After all, we didn't need to know that the Bible was inerrant when we examined the passages which are interpreted as defining the doctrine of inerrancy.
   
   
3. If we can determine something as important as the doctrine of inerrancy without knowing that the Bible is inerrant, why can't we determine other things as well?
   
   

In the Catholic view of inerrancy it is not necessary to first place our faith in a particular interpretation of certain Biblical passages before we can know that the Bible is inerrant. If this were not the case we might be tempted to give weight to these two questions:

1. If we can determine something as important as Christ's purpose and plan for His Church without knowing that the Bible is inerrant, why can't we determine other things as well?
   
   
2. Why do we even need to know that the Bible is inerrant at all? After all, we didn't need to know this when we determined God's plan for the Church?

These questions are answered when we consider that the Church (the apostles) wrote the New Testament and established the practice of the early church under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit. So the real issue is whether we can trust the Church in properly representing the history and teachings of Christ, and in its role as the visible Church on earth. Determining the Church's credentials does not depend on first determining whether or not the New Testament is inerrant, but rather on whether its writings are trustworthy sources of truth.

In Catholicism these questions are easily answered because we have an unbroken chain of teaching authority which can answer these questions. Even Protestants admit this in part when they adopt the Catholic Church's teaching of the Trinity (for example). Certainly the Bible itself does not provide the modern Trinitarian formulation -- it has been developed over the centuries before the Protestant Reformation.

In Protestantism these questions remain unanswered. The doctrine of Biblical inerrancy cannot be determined conclusively -- it is merely assumed or, as with the doctrine of the Trinity, it is taken as is from the Catholic Church. But there is no justification for Protestants to "borrow" doctrines from the Catholic Church in this piecemeal fashion -- they should accept all Catholic doctrines if they accept even one. But of course, no Protestant would ever do this.

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Objections

Both Catholics and Protestants have objections to the way in which the other determines that the Bible is inerrant. For thoroughness I'm including both the objections and a typical answer given to address the objection.

Objections by Catholics

• That some Protestants view the inspiration of the Bible in terms of the "dictation theory" -- that God dictated the text of the Bible to the writers. There is a sense in which God did communicate the contents of the Bible to its authors. But in the dictation theory the authors hear the words and write them down. The answer is that some Protestants do think this but many Protestants view the process of inspiration in the same way that most Catholics do.
• That Protestants base their claim of the inerrancy of the Bible upon their own private (unauthorized) interpretation of the Bible, since they don't acknowledge the teaching authority of the true Church, the Catholic Church. The answer given by Protestants is to attack the basis for the Catholic Church rather than really dealing with the issue of whether their interpretation is correct, or whether it is even possible to come up a correct interpretation at all without an interpretation authority. It is partially true that the Catholic Church bases its claim to existence on a private (pre-inerrant) interpretation of the Bible. But, of course, Catholics believe that their interpretations are based on historical developments by authoritative leaders of the Church, whereas the Protestant leaders are considered as imposters.
• That Protestants know the Bible is inerrant because the Holy Spirit tells them. The answer is that certainly some Protestants accept the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy for this reason. But this is not a good reason, as Catholics correctly point out. As history demonstrates, many false doctrines have been validated by declaring that "the Holy Spirit told me." One of the reasons we have the Bible in the first place is so that we have a standard to use in verifying claims that people make.
• That we can't use the claims of inerrancy within the Bible as proof that the Bible is inerrant because this is an invalid procedure. To illustrate this objection, consider the Book of Mormon. It claims to be inerrant so why don't we believe it? But there is a serious problem with this argument. If we can't believe the Bible's own claims about itself, then how can we believe its claims that the Catholic Church is the "true" Church? The Catholic answer to this question is that the succession of church authority provides for a way to correctly interpret the Bible and to understand the true nature of the Church.

Objections by Protestants

• Protestants, of course, don't accept the Catholic interpretation of the various passages that Catholics use in determining that the Catholic Church is Christ's authoritative church. This issue is beyond the scope of this article (more info).

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Another View of Inerrancy

There is another way to understand the doctrine of inerrancy. The question of inerrancy is whether or not we can trust the Bible to be free from error. But this question depends on the more foundational question of whether or not we can trust the apostles and writers of the Bible.

The early Christians trusted the apostles to give them a historically accurate account of what Jesus did and said. They didn't require a doctrine of "the inerrancy of the apostles" to do this. Jesus selected His disciples and trained them to carry the banner and to start His church.

The apostles made decisions based on what they had learned during their training with Jesus. And, yes, the Holy Spirit was involved in every step of the process as He is today. But the apostles weren't "inerrant." They made mistakes and helped each other figure out the correct course as they evangelized people and established the early church.

Others, such as Paul, who were not part of the original twelve disciples of Jesus were either involved with the apostles from very early, or in the case of Paul, instructed by Jesus Himself. This was their authority. They were trained by Jesus or those who had been with Him; they were tested to prove that they had what it took to establish the church; and Jesus trusted them to do the job and passed the banner on to them.

The Bible describes this process in a lot of detail but it is not comprehensive in every detail. In the same way that the apostles started the early church and passed the banner on to the next generation of church leaders, the leadership of the Catholic Church today is still qualified to properly interpret the Bible. Yes, there have been many false teachers over the centuries, but this has been discovered by comparing their teaching and practices with the writings of the Early Church Fathers and the writers of the Bible. So today, we have a rather large collection of writings to help keep us from doctrinal error. But more importantly, we have the official statements of the Catholic Church to provide us with the correct interpretation.

The Bible is inerrant in the same way that Paul's or Peter's real-life speeches were inerrant -- they contain the truth about God and salvation. Really the Bible is just a way for us who live centuries after the historical days of the apostolic era to understand the message and the truth of God's plan of redemption. The Bible is inerrant for two reasons:

• God's truth and plan for salvation is inerrant
• The Bible accurately expresses these truths

Many of the cultural issues that we read about in the Bible cannot be completely understood by us today. But in reading about these events in the Bible, we gain insight as we try to understand what it must have been like for those living at the time. In our zeal to understand God's commands and will for us today, we have created a body of commentaries on the Bible just as the Israelites did with the Talmud and other writings.

We should return to the simplicity of the gospel as we read and study the Bible. As we read the New Testament, we should seek to understand what the people of the day understood the words to mean and should apply the lessons to our own lives and to our modern world. In doing so we should accept the official interpretations of the Catholic Church to keep us from inventing new doctrines and distorting others by giving a private interpretation to scripture.

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